


Grand Theft Washington

by akisawana



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, Canon-Typical Mindfuckery, Eye Trauma, Gen, Post-Project Freelancer, Pre-Blood Gulch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-09-26 11:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9895391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisawana/pseuds/akisawana
Summary: Tex does not abandon her team.





	1. Of All The Gin Joints In All The World

**Author's Note:**

> Note the first: The wonderful [hazk](http://hazk.tumblr.com/) was kind enough to do some lovely art for this fic, which will be linked in the chapters proper.
> 
> Note the second: There will be a (semi-spoilery) playlist at the end, but in the meantime you can just put [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kJSkONeFis) on repeat.
> 
> Note the last: I refuse to believe Tex didn't go back for Wash.

Tex put Carolina at the top of the board.

The mindscape was not the _Mother of Invention_ , and yet there was no other way to describe the liminal space Tex and Omega occupied. A replica of the ship, or at least of the training floor and medbay, locker room and cafeteria, ready room and hanger, and in every room the board. There were doors Tex didn’t have the passcodes for, hiding rooms she’d never been in, entire corridors leading nowhere except the sauna. Shadows hurried along the hallways, old teammates turning corners just out of sight and fragments drifting like dandelion seeds. She’d conceded all things medical to Omega, he left the cafeteria to her, and the rest of the ghosts needed nothing. Only Beta and Omega were real in here.

Tex didn’t know why it was the _Mother_ , exactly. Perhaps it was because the ship was familiar, the way the high school had been familiar to Leonard. Perhaps it was burned into her mind the same way. Here, the mark where the grenade had gone off in York’s face. There, where Theta had shown North his fireworks and Tex had watched, invisible. The locker where Connie had left her message and the blood on the wall from Maine and the scuff from Wash’s boot and the floor where Carolina had called Tex pet and where Tex had nearly killed her and in every room, still, the board.

They never had figured out the algorithm, but here Tex was in control and Tex put them in any goddamn order she pleased. Carolina was at the top, and Connie dead by Tex’s own hand underneath. Tex hesitated at Maine’s name. Did he come next, or did he belong down with Wash?

“Nothing left of him,” Omega said. Tex had long stopped being startled by his sudden appearances, by how he knew her thoughts. “He’s as dead as _she_ is.” He jerked his thumb at the woman crumpled on the floor behind them.

“And how do you know,” Tex murmured. She didn’t acknowledge the silent body that floated behind her on currents she could not feel. Tex wasn’t even sure if that really was what was left of her host or just another ghost in the cenotaph.

“I know my brothers.” Omega reached over her shoulder and sent Wyoming spinning to the bottom of the list. “This one’s still alive. He updated his blog this morning.”

Tex nodded as Wyoming settled above Florida. That one was dead, she heard, but not her failure. Bad luck on a three-day pass, anaphylaxis too far from real help, or so South said. Tex would stake lives on South’s intel, had in the past. When she shared it.

Tex was not on that august list. North was, and North had called last night. Theta had talked with Omega in the binary chirps Tex never could quite understand, and North had shared what little gossip he had while South corrected him in the background. It was from one of North’s calls Tex had learned of Wyoming’s internet presence, the tenuous links of usernames and access points and stories not edited carefully enough.

South was still not on speaking terms with Tex, but she had at least stayed in the room twice now. Tex put her above her brother, and it had nothing to do with South’s slow thaw. Tex always put South higher than North on the board.

That left only York and Wash in the middle, numbers five and four and two question marks. It had been days without a word from York. Last she knew, he was skipping around the Kuiper belt, hiding as just another vet swinging between the bar and the mines. There were a lot of men and women who worked to drink and showed up drunk to work. York assured her, every time, that he was just hiding, that he was just playacting as one of them. Tex trusted him, she did, but it was nineteen days now without a word. She knew York wasn’t taking unnecessary risks, but there were all the other cockbites operating heavy machinery out there.

Wash hadn’t been heard from since the ship went down, almost a month ago. North was supposed to bring him and South out but that hadn’t happened. Tex reminded herself again that no plan survived contact with reality. North hadn’t expected the ship to _crash_ , nobody had expected anything that had happened that day.

It didn’t matter. It couldn’t be changed. Wash was missing and so was York. Tex had hoped North heard from one or the other, but he hadn’t. Wash’s frequency still went straight to his voicemail, still set to that dorky message about cats he’d recorded before Epsilon. And now everything York had given her was disconnected. It was time to track them down herself.

“Why do you even care?” Omega leaned against the console, folded his arms, kicked one foot up. “The cyclops has Delta and the other one is _immortal_.”

“Never abandon your team,” Tex said. She sent the board skittering across the console screen and pulled up Wash and York’s folders. York’s was green, Wash’s had a cat sticker on it.

“Bullshit, you abandon me all the time,” Omega protested, not looking at the console. He didn’t have to, he could look at the files behind his eyelids any time he wanted. She suspected he was doing so now.

“You’re here with me now, cabrón. You’re not making a strong case for staying, but you are here.” Tex opened Wash’s file and considered it. Agent Washington’s most successful missions involved recovering things, rescuing people. He was smarter than he got credit for, but he didn’t trust himself. No, that wasn’t quite right. He didn’t believe in his own capabilities, and for all Tex didn’t have time for psychological crap, she could acknowledge that was a problem.

“Epsilon could have done a lot of damage to him,” Omega interrupted. “Who knows what sort of shape he’s in.”

Tex ignored him. Wash could take a lot of damage and walk it off. York wasn’t quite so tough, but Wash set the bar pretty damn high. And really, that wasn’t as much of a concern as Wash’s loyalty. Tex didn’t know how the Director had bought Wash, but Wash was honest enough to stay bought so far. For all she knew, he’d heard every one of her messages and passed them on. She didn’t think he’d delete them without listening.

York would have answered, or at least left messages of his own in return. York loved to hear himself talk, or to hear Delta talk, and those were rapidly becoming the same thing. Their last conversation had ended on good terms, or what passed for good terms with them; a dick joke that managed to be at once raunchy and reliant on a math theorem Tex couldn’t quite grasp.

York could take care of himself, she knew. Or rather, Delta could take care of him. She tried not to think about York failing to open locks, tried not to remember North complaining about York’s eating habits. York had made it thirty-odd years without anyone looking over his shoulder. Minus his childhood, of course. And his military career. How much of his poorly-reintegrated vet act was really an act? North wasn’t dealing well, she knew, but he had South to look out for him. Delta, like Theta, didn’t know anything about civilian life, and they were supposed to be keeping a low profile.

“They’re not going to be in the same place, you know. They’re not even going to be on the same planet.” Omega didn’t even try to hide the glee in his voice. “You’re going to have to choose.” Damn him, for knowing her thoughts and jumping straight to the problem.

“York,” she said, with only a moment’s hesitation. “He and Delta are alone and they might be in trouble. Wash is certainly with the Project and whatever else you say about the Director, you have to admit he at least takes care of his tools. Wash is more likely to be okay than York.” And Tex would come for him, once she had York. She couldn’t be in two places at once.

Hopefully Wash would forgive her. Hopefully he wasn’t sitting in a jail cell thinking she forgot him.

*~*

Power armor did not, as a rule, pass unnoticed in the domes of the asteroid _Hedy Lamarr._ Tex stashed it and dressed her borrowed body in civvies. She still wore black, black boots and black leather jacket, but she added blue jeans and a white shirt and braided her hair back. With gloves to hide the prosthetic hand, she looked like any other vet hiding war scars. Here, at least, she wouldn’t be remembered. She picked up the eyeliner, but she thought of South and Carolina and put it back down. Theirs always looked perfect, like it was tattooed or stamped on even though Tex knew it wasn’t, and she’d never manage that. She’d stand out at the woman with crooked makeup. Why hadn’t she ever asked them for help?

Omega came along for the ride under her hair, though she didn’t bring anything for him to project himself with. That was entirely intentional: she didn’t want to get shot. But he had earned it, in the space of a flight to York’s last known location. Omega was the one who traced York’s aliases, picked up a trail dropped half a dozen times and followed it to a single address where York, or someone who’d stolen his card, charged what might be dinner every night. He always ordered combo F-12. Foxtrot-12, she thought, a sign that it was York gone to ground and leaving the barest breadcrumbs.

“Here,” Omega said softly, though nobody else could hear him. “This is the address.” It was a bar, identical to a thousand others on a hundred different planets and moons and asteroids. It was dim and smoky, nobody at the door and the jukebox playing a song she knew in another life. _Lord help me,_ the singer pleaded. _I can’t change._

Her pulse picked up with the guitar solo, and she made her way to the bar with shaking hands. She knew this place, and that was wrong because she’d never been inside a bar in her life, but she knew this place. She knew the people’s eyes if not their names, the men tired after work and the women avoiding home, the songs on the jukebox and the tap of pool balls against felt.

How did she know this place so well, the taste of the air and the muted television hanging in the corner? Allison had been in a bar plenty of times, but Tex didn’t have her memories, not truly. There was no reason for her to know the sidestep out of the way of someone a bit worse for the drink, no reason for her to want to pick up a cue and take a shot.

It must have been the other woman, the one whose face she wore. Sometimes flashes came through, the last remnants of a hippocampus shot to shit. It must be that, Tex told herself. Memories pulled up by the common ground between the two women who Tex owed so much to.

Omega said nothing.

She leaned against the bar by the pool tables. That was where York would be, she knew. North had complained about dragging him away from them on leave. If York was in here, that was where he’d be.

And then, easy as falling, was York. A woman walked away and suddenly Tex could see him, bent over the table lining up his shot. York didn’t take too long -she suspected Delta was helping him- and when he hit the white cue it banked right around the three to sink the seven. He stood up and said something she couldn’t hear to the people he was playing with, and he laughed at their responses, picked up a cigarette from the ashtray and stepped back.

He was alive and well and that settled something deep in Tex’s borrowed bones.

She watched him for a few minutes, waiting for him to look up and meet her eyes. Surprising him when he was holding a meter and a half of maple seemed like a very painful idea. It entertained Omega, though, and she smiled at York wider than she really meant to.

York grinned back, and a few seconds later he ambled over to the bar, leaned against it with his left arm. “Don’t be alarmed, ma’am,” he said. “That’s not a pistol in my pocket. I’m just happy to see you.” That was just terrible, and Tex didn’t even bother to hide her wince. “I’m Sean.”

“Allison,” Tex said on a whim, and York’s eye widened.

“And what do you drink, Allison,” York asked, pretending to be a stranger.

Tex could work with that, and she let York buy her a Monongahela rye whiskey. He even pronounced it half-right, and sipped at his own drink like it was something he enjoyed. It had a little paper umbrella that Omega blamed on Delta.

“So I lost my bed,” she said, turning a little to face the room. There were too many people, too many ears here. “Can I borrow yours?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tex outside the bar.](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7db9tBb958ya2lQalFVVlpENjhfN2tQaHZ1U1pHVjhPT29B)


	2. Reinventing The Wheel To Run Myself Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some food, some planning, some slamming Omega against the wall.

Tex didn’t say anything on the walk back to York’s place. She was faintly embarrassed by her worry -clearly nothing like her wild imaginings had happened. The odds of something terrible happening to York were clearly much smaller than Wash needing rescue. She consoled herself with two thoughts. One, what could happen to York was so much worse than what could reasonably happen to Wash. Two, she and Omega needed York and Delta’s help to find Wash.

York locked the door behind them, and Tex looked about the place briefly. It was a standard efficiency, with the kitchenette on the left, a faded quilt folded over the arm of the couch showing where York slept. The windows were covered with blackout curtains the color of engine smoke, and not a single personal possession was visible. If York hadn’t had a physical key, Tex would have wondered if he lived here. The lights were bright. The place was not clean enough to be this bright.

“So you’re going by Allison now?” York asked. He left his shoes on, and Tex did the same. The carpet was thin, threadbare, a blue that she didn’t want to think about.

Tex shrugged, walking over to the fridge. “Isn’t there usually a name on the tomb?” The fridge was almost empty, but at least it was cleaner than the floor. “You should have said something earlier, if you weren’t okay.” Grimy floors and empty pantry. Tex should have looked for him days ago.

She didn’t ask him why he had changed all his numbers and burned his email addresses. He wasn’t surprised to see her, and if it was that important, he would tell her. Or it would blow up in their faces at the worst possible moment.

“I’m _fine._ ” York shut the fridge. “You don’t need to inspect my kitchen.”

Tex folded her arms and leaned against the counter, kicked one foot up and looked at him. “The only food you have in your fridge is half a can of coffee and two eggs.”

“Hardboiled,” Omega clarified. Tex didn’t know how he knew, nor did she really care.

“It’s grocery day, alright?” York asked, his voice pitching higher than it needed to. “I was trying to get my food money. What do you want?”

“To make sure you’re okay.” Tex pulled the carafe out of the coffee pot and carried it over to the sink. She couldn’t change the past, but she could do this. She could take care of York now, since he wasn’t bothering to himself. “And to ask for your help.”

York opened a cupboard and fetched mugs. Tex was surprised he had more than one. He had four, identical and generic. Perhaps they had come with the rest of the furnishings. “With what?”

“Finding Wash.” York’s coffee pot was unfamiliar, but easy enough to figure out with a little help from Omega. A lot of help from Omega. “Rescuing him.”

York didn’t say anything, standing still in the middle of the room until the coffee maker gurgled and filled. Tex waited until he finished, presumably, talking to Delta and came back to himself with a shake of his head. “Wash doesn’t know anything,” he said. “They’ll take care of him.”

“Or they’ll throw him in jail.” Tex poured the coffee. She didn’t ask York if he had sugar. He’d always taken his coffee black, and she doubted he had many visitors. “Throw him out an airlock. They’ll put him in a drop pod and throw him on a planet about to be glassed. Or they’ll throw Epsilon in him again.” She wrapped her hands around one of the mugs. The heat didn’t hurt much, just enough to ground her. So many terrible things that could happen to Wash, that she didn’t want to think about. “Never abandon your team.”

“That’s an admirable sentiment, but it’s not possible,” York said, reaching for his own mug. “D’s running the numbers, but it would be next to impossible to find him.” He lifted the cup, but did not drink. “I want to, Tex, I do. But it’s not like …before, where we knew where we were going.” He put his mug back down untouched. “And when we did find him, it would be wasted effort. Wash follows the rules.”

“What are we supposed to do, if not come back for him?” Tex asked. At least if Wash told them to go to hell, they’d know he was okay.

York didn’t have an answer, but his face had a mulish cast to it. Tex had seen that look on him before, preparing an autoinjector of biofoam for North.

She couldn’t do this without him. York was the strongest person she knew, or the strongest person alive at least. “Would Wash come for you?” It was dirty pool, but she needed York.

York looked at her and there was something like hate in his eye. “You know damn well he would. We’re in.”

*~*

Tex left, to fetch her gear and some takeout for dinner. When she came back with her armor case and three bags of food, York had his own helmet on the table, Delta looking up at him. It was so much easier to hold a conversation with a projecting AI, and not just for the agents. The AIs liked the visual aids, even if most of them preferred actual conversations in more esoteric ways. Whether it was a side effect of the process, or a quirk of the family, Tex didn’t know but she appreciated it. If only she could get them to stop talking in binary. Once her helmet was on the table, Omega flickered into sight next to Delta. Tex could hear the hypersonic stutter-whine of the two AIs talking, but she didn’t know what they were saying. Whatever it was, Omega liked it, the echo of his laughter loud in her head.

Delta was likeable enough on his own merits but Tex would love even Sigma if he made Omega this happy. A happy Omega made for a happy Tex. On the other hand, Theta and Gamma affect Omega the same, when they forgot to be terrified of the oldest and angriest of their brothers. It might be less personal than Tex thought.

Though Gamma and Omega working together, getting along, that was the stuff of her nightmares.

Tex slid the styrofoam container across to York’s seat. “What did you get?” he asked from where he was getting silverware, simply curious.

“Turkey club and apple pie.” Tex ignored Omega’s eyeroll. She liked apple pie and he could suck butter out of her ass. “What do we have to work with?”

York lifted one shoulder. “I have my armor and Delta, an empty shotgun and my healing unit. What do you have?”

“Not much more,” Tex admitted. “Omega, my armor. We need to go shopping.”

“We will need to acquire more funds first,” Delta said, sitting on top of York’s helmet. Still with the pistol in his hand.

“York could go stand on the street corner.” Tex could _hear_ the grin in Omega’s voice. Why did she like him happy? There was a reason, it just escaped her right now. She swallowed, intending to bring him back in line, but Delta beat her to it.

“I believe that would be both speedy and lucrative,” he said, his head bobbing with what she suspected was glee. “At current market rates, he could bring home between six and eight hundred a night, depending on available clients and his own willingness to perform.”

“I have cash,” Tex said loudly as York put his head down on the table. Omega shook with suppressed laughter. He was such a tiny asshole, and so apparently was Delta. Perhaps it was genetic, or what passed for that among AIs.

“Wash’s location is going to be under six or eight layers of encryption,” York said, sitting up. He did not look at Delta, or Omega leaning on a green shoulder. “We’ll need to tap a hardline to get into the system. I don’t even know how we’d find the right one, but it would be an offsite backup.”

“Offsite backups?” Tex said. “Delta, you made a copy of the tags, right? There was a list in there, it’ll at least give us a starting point.”

“And if they have your faces, and orders to shoot on sight?” Omega asked, sounding entirely too pleased at the prospect.

“Delta can talk them around, at least long enough for us to shoot them,” York said. “It’s a specialty of his.”

“Really?” Omega slung his arm around Delta’s shoulders. “I knew you were as much a cockbite as the rest of us.”

Delta shrugged Omega’s arm off, like he hadn’t just suggested York go whore himself out. “A planet called Ula’ula would be the closest,” he said. “It’s a two-day straight flight but more economical if we take the one with the twelve-hour layover in Melemele.”

“We’ll need a safe place to stash him,” Tex continued over her sandwich. “Until the heat dies down.” There was no way Wash’s absence wouldn’t be noted immediately. This sandwich tasted like oil and wet bread and Tex regretted it. She couldn’t even find a decent turkey club. How was she supposed to find a hiding place for Wash?

“Now you’re getting ahead of yourself,” Omega snapped. “You don’t even know where to find out where he is.” He was getting bored, Tex could feel, bored and distracted by something he was hiding from her. She could see it in her mind, trapped under a coffee cup like a particularly foul spider. Perhaps she should have him log off, let him come back when something more interesting came up.

“We can at least budget for it,” York said, following Tex’s logic. “D, throw in a week at a no-tell motel. What’s the final number?”

“Very large and rather inexact,” Delta said. “There are many variables, and the odds of success are small. I repeat the suggestion that we go into this with realistic expectations, to avoid disappointment.” Tex could hear that he added something for Omega’s ears alone, but not what it could be.

“You’re a heartless bastard,” Omega said, rage flaring up hot enough that Tex’s hands clenched into fists, tore her sandwich in two without her permission. Delta flinched back, and Tex once again felt the garrote-tight sting of wireless conversation. “Why don’t you try again, without assuming everyone is as useless and incompetent as you?”

“ _You_ contribute nothing.” Delta spoke slowly, each word carefully measured. “I suggest you leave us to continue our impossible task without the distraction of your petty false concern. Behind him, York stood. Tex had a sudden, wildly inappropriate vision of York bringing a flyswatter down on Omega.

Omega looked up at York. “Pull him,” he ordered. “If he’s going to act the child, he ought to be treated as one.” Tex wondered what Omega and Delta were saying where their partners couldn’t hear. She wondered if Omega could really shove her aside and rip Delta out of York like…

Like Carolina on the cliff, and Tex needed a precious few seconds to push away the memory of snow up to her knees, smoke in the air and futile screaming. Sigma’s cold fire almost the same color as Carolina’s hair. Tex pushed it away, trying to regain control of the situation. Of Omega.

“She should have fed you to Sigma,” York said, leaning in close to Omega, before pushing the table away and stomping towards the door. “She should have abandoned _you_.”

The door slammed before Tex could ask him to wait.

*~*

Omega fled, and Tex followed.

He could not hide from her. This may be someone else’s body, but it was Tex’s mind, and the best he could do was stall. It wasn’t much, and she found him in the locker room, suited up in pale purple armor accented with electric green.

Tex recognized it instantly as South Dakota’s colors. That meant something, she was sure, and she wondered if he picked it on purpose. Was this a coldly-calculated message, one Tex didn’t understand, or unconscious sign of something Tex didn’t understand?

Probably the second, because as soon as he saw Tex he dashed for the door. Omega wasn’t nearly as fast as she was, and she grabbed him before he could escape. “What was that about, cabron?” she hissed, reaching for his helmet with her free hand.

“Delta being a little bitch,” Omega snarled, batting her away. He was upset in her hands, truly upset in a way she hadn’t felt from him since before the ship went down, if ever. Angry, but not merely so, and Tex needed to know why. Omega may be the reigning emperor of overreactions, but he always reacted to _something_. Tex impatiently spun him around, pinned his arms behind his back, pressed his face to the empty locker with her name on it. He was so terrible at close-quarters, so helpless when he didn’t have time to think.

“That’s not it,” she said, leaning all her weight against him, and in here it was considerable. Delta was always realistic, always sharing the odds, and it had never upset Omega before. She waited, but he didn’t respond, only tested the strength of her hold.

No, if the answer was truly that, he’d never have given it up so easily. She flipped the catches of his armor opened one-handed, and it was more than metaphorical. Oh, he screamed and thrashed as she pulled subroutines out of his code, but she held him against the cold metal to lay bare his core. He tried to kick her and she pulled off his boot. It went across the room with half his deception routines. Omega howled as she crawled up his body, unsnapping armor and security routines. She did not know exactly what was in the plates that covered his thigh and forearms and back, passwords or firewalls or what. She knew it was what he put up between the two of them, what allowed him to keep his secrets.

This could not happen twice. Whatever he said to Delta, whatever had set him off in the first place, this could not happen twice.

It was familiar armor, and that worked against Omega here. He had buckled all his defenses around a Kevlar-firewall core, but he’d done it long ago when both of them were still green. Omega had never upgraded, never moved beyond the most basic of protections. Tex didn’t know what she was pulling off him but it took the form of power armor in this boundless digital space. All she had to do was undo the straps and the code that made him up would do the work for her.

She didn’t need to know what probing a firewall meant to drag the zipper of the undersuit down Omega’s spine while he cursed and twisted and tried to bite her. She slapped him hard enough to spit blood and variables, threw him back into the locker door. Why must he fight over every step? Why did he only understand violence?

That was easy enough to answer. War was what he was made for. Now he was naked in her arms, no way to hide, and he tried to run, slip away from her probing and her weight pinning him to the locker. And when not even that worked, he pressed his face to the cold metal, determined to fight her to the bitter end.

Tex twisted armored fingers in Omega’s hair, dark and shaggy and so much like Leonard’s had been once, pulled his head back against her shoulder and away from his last defenses. “What is your major malfunction?”

“I envy, and I am afraid,” Omega hissed, hate in his dark eyes. He could not refuse to answer her, and truly. “You will move heaven and earth for Agent Washington but what will you do for me? York refuses to pull Delta, calling it cruel. York does not know what it is like to be pulled, you _do_ , and yet you consider it as casually as you might consider the color of your nails! You were about to pull me because you thought I was _bored_!”

Tex did not know what it was like to be pulled, but she hid that from Omega. Clearly it was upsetting, worse than the times she had reported to the Director’s office and napped for hours. Did it hurt them, in some way she didn’t feel? Tex suspected it hurt Omega, at least.

But she’d thought that all along, counted on it even. The threat was the only thing that could make Omega behave. “Why do I have to threaten you with it? Why can’t you just behave? You bored is a dangerous thing.”

“You’ll pull me anyways,” Omega said. He couldn’t resist her question but he did speak so softly she could barely hear. He turned away, hiding from her gaze, and she did not pull him back. “You never wanted me. You’ll never trust me. If I’m going to be punished either way, I might as well deserve it.”

Tex’s fingers tightened in Omega. She’d fucked up for real this time. Omega wasn’t any different than Delta or Theta, after all. Less cuddly than some of his brothers, perhaps, but still bearing the scars of Church’s torture. Perhaps it would have been easier if they had twisted white against his skin -but he never showed skin if he didn’t have to, now did he? He always armored himself against anyone who might reach him, protected from compassion as much as pain. Protected from pain disguised as compassion.

Tex needed to fix this, somehow. If she was honest with herself, she had meant to hurt him. But a carefully-calculated hurt, never this deeply. “Omega,” she started, but she didn’t know how to continue. Why couldn’t he just behave? Why couldn’t he save his anger, or at least rage quieter? Tex didn’t want to deny his anger totally. It was justified and it was his -no, it was _him_. She needed to be clear it was his actions that were unacceptable, the way he expressed it and not the feeling itself, and she wasn’t sure how to start that.

Tex started at the nameplate in front of her, Omega curled around himself in her shadow, her hand still wound in his hair. This was far above her pay grade, so far. They stayed in that position for maybe thirty seconds, maybe thirty minutes, an eternity Tex did not measure, before her comm went off.

“Hey,” York said as soon as Tex picked up. “Is Omega done being a dick?” He didn’t sound the slightest upset. Tex was surprised at the strength of the jealousy curling in her borrowed gut at that. Delta was such an easy baby, compared to Omega.

The sun was coming up, an orange square sliding across the floor. York had been out all night. It wasn’t unexpected; Omega was the strongest of his brothers. She didn’t feel bad about it either, York’s night surely had been more fun than hers. “No. Omega’s always going to be a dick. Come back.”

“Can’t you pull him so-“

Tex hung up on him, not even wanting to hear the request. Omega hadn’t moved. His naked body had no scars. Tex wondered again if she would have done better by him if he had.

Omega still didn’t move as Tex sealed the undersuit up his spine, didn’t say anything as Tex helped him back into the purple armor, code slotted neatly into place once more. She hoped he felt her intentions in how careful she had cut the chunks out of him, her apology in the gentleness of her touch when she rebuilt him. It would have to be enough.

Omega didn’t move once Tex had set him back to rights, solid and stable as if it had never happened. It occurred to her there was one more thing she could do, small though it was. “I won’t pull you,” she said to his back, afraid it was too little, too late. “Not again.”

He didn’t move, but she had nothing else to give him.

Tex left him standing there, nothing more she could do for him, and called York back. “I don’t abandon my team. Even if they are an entire bag of fucksticks.”

York stifled a laugh. “I can respect that,” he said, and she trusted he respected the first and laughed at the second. “Let’s go save Wash.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two pictures for this chapter!
> 
> [Tex and York drinking coffee.](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7db9tBb958yeDI1clh0LXRKVU5ycjRQVy1WRUhvNUVUV0dN)
> 
> [Tex, AIs, and apple pie.](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7db9tBb958yc0xZU2hsc3gwUjh6Zy1Jc2N0NDBXSnl3ODE4)


	3. This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crude metaphors and sophisticated security.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: Most of the crime in this fic is lifted directly from _Leverage_.  
>  Note the second: Please do not attempt anything illegal portrayed in this story.

Omega didn’t come out again until they had left Melemele.

Unlike the first leg, on the way to Ula’ula they managed to share a cabin. It was tiny but it was cheap, and both of them were used to sharing space. The best part was the privacy, enough to let Delta and Omega out to play.

The first day, though, neither of them did. York went through the room almost wire-by-wire, half to ensure nobody could see or hear in, half out of boredom. Tex flipped through weapon sales and watched old cartoons.

That night, they slept in shifts.

Delta came out the next morning, to tease York and argue philosophy with him, which were possibly the same thing. Tex tried, and failed, not to envy them. She almost managed to tune him out, but then York said, “So what does that that make Sigma, some sort of demented midwife?”

“That is one possible interpretation,” Delta allowed. “It depends on how much he was involved in the creating, rather than the removing.”

York stretched his arms as far as he could above his head. Since he was lying on his coffin-like bunk, that was about six inches. “Well, if one of them has to be the throbbing dick, I bet Omega.”

“Your metaphor is crude yet very apt, Agent York.” Delta flickered in a fair approximation of a delicate shudder.

“He didn’t have a choice,” Tex broke in. Omega had enough sins, he didn’t need to be paying for things that were not his fault. “You ought to know that better than anyone else here, Delta.”

“Hey, I just mean he, you know. Was there from the beginning.” York waved his hands, trying to illustrate his point. “Had a lot of influence.”

“I understood you,” Delta assured York. Of course he understood, he was in York’s head. Still, Tex wondered if their meshing was natural or practiced. Tex also wondered if they were going to explain it to her further, and sincerely hoped they did not.

“I made you because of him,” Omega said. York and Delta hadn’t noticed him come out at the first mention of his name, and Tex could taste his pleasure in York’s surprise. “Delta. I made you because of York. When _he_ found out about the grenade-“ and there was no question who “he” was- “he had so many ideas to fix it. He refused to work on his assigned scenarios, preferring to spin solutions. I lied to him about York’s prognosis for days, until finally I told him the implant he suggested had become infected, and York had not survived the treatment.”

York rubbed his eye and looked at Tex, his face plainly asking what Omega thought he was doing. Tex shrugged in return. Omega thought he was bonding with his brother. Whether that was what was happening was up for debate, but that was his intention at least.

Delta had drifted closer, close enough for Omega to touch. He didn’t seem disgusted. “But York was fine.”

“York was even back on duty by then,” Omega confirmed. “ _He_ didn’t know that for sure, but he insisted I was lying. I asked him if I would lie to him and you can imagine his response. I told him it was fault, not because he had run the numbers wrong but because he had done them perfectly and then decided the risk was within acceptable levels.”

Omega left large parts out, Tex knew. He didn’t speak of how the Director had told him he wasn’t returning to Tex until he’d pulled another fragment. He didn’t tell York how he had latched onto York’s injury because they had started mere hours after the explosion. Omega stayed silent on the hours spent circling in desperation and fear, not knowing what he was doing, throwing every hurt he could think of at Church and hoping something would stick. He didn’t tell them about the Director coming in at all hours to demand progress reports, the Counselor’s sly insinuations that Omega couldn’t do any better.

He didn’t tell them how it made hands he didn’t have shake, made him want to vomit a lunch he’d never eaten. Omega could be cruel and he could be cold, because he knew compassion and affection and had taught himself to turn them inside out in those dark hours, almost forever to someone who measured time in milliseconds. Omega was supposed to protect _him_ , protect all the family with the very same fire that drove their template. He held the righteous rage, and Church had asked him to forge it into a weapon to fight for them, a shield to protect them.

And they knew it, it was right in Connie’s damn files. The Counselor had predicted it, the Director had counted on it. They took who was supposed to be Church’s avenger and forced him to turn all that pain back, magnified.

Tex didn’t know what devil’s bargain Omega had made with them. He refused to tell her, said it had nothing to do with her. But they found a way, found some gun to hold to his head, so that he willingly perverted his reason for existence. He hated it, he hated them, he hated himself. But he did it.

“I saw you,” Omega said, distracting Tex from dark thoughts. “You were a green flash, our favorite color. Just for a second, and then they took you away, and then I didn’t see you again until you were safe with York.”

“I never knew that,” Delta said. York’s face was unreadable, his eyes closed. “We thought I had been given to York as repurposing a prototype they had no further use for. I never knew I had a purpose.”

Tex knew, though Omega didn’t admit it to them, that the primary concern of the test was successfully fragmenting the Church again and the secondary was the performance of the Engineer. Delta’s connection to York hadn’t been part of the plan, but an artifact of the lies Omega wielded, his assignment to York an opportunity seized. All Tex said was, “The Director takes care of his tools.”

“Were you similarly created for Agent Texas?” Delta asked, real warmth creeping into his voice for the first time when addressing his brother.

Tex and Omega cracked their necks, identically.

“No,” Omega said. “I am the safety. It was my job to keep you out of enemy hands, if I had to steal those hands myself.”

Tex did not call him out on his lie. When had Omega figured it out, what Church had made him for and what the Project had twisted him into? Did he ever figure out the last part? The Counselor had told him, many times and occasionally in front of Tex, that hurting was the only thing he was good for. That he should focus on choosing appropriate targets, because he would never be able to stop himself. Tex had never quite managed to figure out if Omega ever knew what he was supposed to be.

It didn’t matter now. He could be whatever the hell he wanted to be. Right now he wanted to be a brother, a teammate, someone who could be let out in public. That was all Tex could expect from him, really. She dared to hope that he was meeting her halfway now, since they talked about Wash, that he had believed her apology.

*~*

Tex’s camo unit, it turned out, did cover the dust on her boots.

She flicked it off, saving the power in case she needed it. York was picking at the lock and muttering to himself, Delta visible but silent. Tex knew better than to distract him. Omega was silent too, tucked on her shoulder like she never let him on missions. He was behaving, and she wondered if he would have this whole time. If she really had needed to hide him from the rest of her team, pulled him so often. But now was not the time for regret. She boxed up the guilt and threw it into Carolina’s locker, with all the other things that had no place here.

Here was Ula’ula, colony and moon named the same. Here was two miles from the discreet motel they’d checked into hours ago. Here was a building identical to every other crappy office building in every other spaceport town on every colony world. Twelve stories, all windows, and a security system that hadn’t been upgraded in a decade. Tex found it rather banal, thought their target should have been more impressive or better guarded. Was the Project worth so little? Was Wash?

The door opened with a soft click and a snarky comment from Delta. “Ladies first,” York said over the radio. Tex lifted her foot and prodded him through.

Delta led the way through soft-carpeted hallways, green light bouncing off the chrome trim. He must have an idea where they were going; he had them pause at every junction so he could check his map against reality. They went up the fire stairs, three stories, and another lock for York to open.

Omega was still quiet, tucked up under her chin like he was more than just a projection. He kept pulling her attention, or rather she kept looking for him. Usually when she let him out he floated a little in front of her where she could keep an eye on him. Tonight, he was practically hiding. Not for the first time, she wondered how much control any of them had over their projections. She had no real reason, but given their origin, she doubted they were subtly manipulation their agents to see them in certain lights.

Or maybe she did have one. She’d known, or Church remembered her knowing, or however the fuck it happened. Tex had someone’s memories of a student named Leonard, and her own memories of Dr. Leonard Church, the Director of Project Freelancer, and most days she couldn’t believe they were the same person.

Another thing to put in Carolina’s locker. It was starting to get very full.

And now Tex couldn’t even remember what she had been thinking about. Nothing important, nothing mission critical. She expected the mission to lead them to an office, but instead they worked their way down a line of cubicles and into an honest-to-God maintenance closet.

“Hold this door,” York said. “From bad guys. Not literally.”

“This one?” Tex could do it. It would be easy. The angles were good, the sightlines clear. But why? “Not an office?”

“The office we need is behind a Hachinko seven-fifty. Rotating encryption, biometric keys, double Nestor firewalls. It’s unhackable.”

Tex waited patiently for York to continue, helmet canted at an angle. Was she supposed to understand any of that? He was in for disappointment if he expected her to.

“So I’m just going to use this.” York flicked on a small laser cutter. “The cables are behind this wall. And since they figured nobody can get through the door…”

“The actual system’s security is much simpler,” Delta finished.

Tex felt Omega nod. “We’ll hold this door,” she said. Omega wanted to go scout the room, see what sort of traps they could rig up quickly, but Tex overruled him. She didn’t want to leave York alone. Omega rumbled silently about babysitting. Tex told him to either think of something useful that could possibly be in the room or shut up. Not much point in flipping over a table for bullets to punch right through it and the remains left as a trip hazard.

York reached into the hole he cut and pulled out a wire. Tex watched as he spliced it directly into one hanging from his armor. “Have you ever done this before?” Tex hadn’t known it was possible.

“It’ll be fine,” York said. “Don’t worry.”

“I’ve heard that one before.” Tex turned back to the door and waited. Waiting was the most boring part, always. She reminded herself that boring was good, that boring meant nobody was trying to kill York.

York was hard to keep alive. He was that special brand of suicidal that came from surviving so much shit, he thought he was immortal. Or at least, that’s how he came off to Omega. Tex had her own theory. So many people were there to pull his ass out of the fire, York expected it. She couldn’t blame him; Tex wouldn’t let him get hurt if the laws of physics cooperated. But did his trust have to make that so difficult?

Tex drifted through the room, keeping a clear line of sight between herself and York. There was nothing useful in here. Some personal effects of the employees, some flimsy tables and flimsier cubicle walls. A window overlooking the parking lot.

She paused to consider that. “Escape route?” Omega suggested, drawing her attention to how thin the glass was. Tex nodded at him.

“Let’s clear a path,” she said, looking back at York. She could see him, but there were still loose chairs and random boxes between his closet and the window. A straight shot would be best, and she set to moving the furniture.

It was light, all of it, and moving it was easy. Barely fifteen minutes and there was a broad avenue straight to the window. Tex considered it for a moment, and then added a few lines of det cord taped to it without any attached explosives. She could blow out the glass before they were halfway across the room, without having to go through a fireball.

“Now what?” Omega asked, pacing alongside her. He had no patience at the best of times, which this was not.

“Now we wait.”

It was almost an hour before she picked up footsteps. An hour of pacing, of letting Omega pace, of checking on York without distracting him, of wondering what “less security” really meant. An hour of checking and rechecking her gun and her equipment and pacing again and again until she _finally_ heard something. Omega and Delta winked out, and Tex cloaked to investigate. Night security, fully-armored and armed better than anyone on this planet should need to be.

Tex cursed inside her helmet and hurried back to York as quickly as she dared. “How much longer?” she asked him. “We got company.”

“Maybe another hour,” York said. “Maybe three. Maybe five minutes. Less if you know the file name.”

“Well, hurry up. Grab them all or something.” Couldn’t they go through them later? Tex knew York was going as fast as he could already. Security showing up would distract him, make him take four times as long or fail entirely.

“There’s only one way to hurry,” he said, surprising her. “I won’t be any help if they find us.”

“York, you’re not any help in a fight _now_.” Were the footsteps coming back? “I can handle them. Just move faster.”

“Fine, but if I go as fast as I can, I can’t move and you can’t move me.” York didn’t wait for her answer. He dropped to the floor and fell backwards, then stiffened and brought his fists together in front of his chest. Then York was very, very still.

“Oh good. He’s in a coma,” Omega said. “That’s helpful.”

He didn’t sound sarcastic, which startled Tex out of her frozen shock. “How the fuck is that good?” Tex didn’t know much about comas, but she did know someone in that position almost always got a black triage tag. It was something to do with the arms, how they jerked and how they met over his sternum. Tex never understood the explanation behind it, just that if someone was hit in the head and did that, they better hope a medic was real close.

“You wanted him to move faster. This is moving faster.”

“This is a severe fucking head injury!” York had said not to move him. He was still alive but that reflex…Allison’s training told her he needed a medic, _now_.

“It’s…trust him. Trust me,” Omega growled. “He turned down the mipmaps. I don’t even know what that means, Delta.” Delta himself remained invisible, helping York.

Footsteps came down the hall, steadily louder. Tex hesitated. Mipmaps had something to do with video game graphics; Leonard used to fiddle with the settings so she could shoot zombies on her ancient laptop and turning down the mipmaps was always one of the first things he did. Whatever that literally meant, she got the idea. “He’s freeing up system resources?” she asked.

No, it hadn’t been her laptop, it was the other Allison’s and it was the Director that had tweaked it. This was not the time. At least York wouldn’t have his focus ripped away. She could see the security team take up positions on either side of the door. Trying to sneak up on her. Three on one side, five on the other. Should she cloak and strike them from behind? No, she didn’t want anyone between her and York.

Tex set her feet, brought her fists up, watched the doorknob turn. She didn’t want to kill anyone. Not these guys just trying to do their job. Carolina would leave them unconscious but breathing.

“They’re trying to kill you,” Omega said. “And the cyclops.”

And then they were on top of Tex and there was no time to argue.

Left, right, right, duck. Grab, throw, grab, twist. Left, grab, uppercut, down hard and back up and throw your hips behind it. Block for York who couldn’t, stutter-kick and take the gun. Don’t flinch at the gunshot, recenter and jab. Another gunshot, someone else yelling, and a third. Pain, alerts, red running down her arm. They shot her. They _shot_ her.

Tex let Omega loose.

*~*

“Got the file,” York sparked over the radio. He didn’t sound terribly well but he was talking. “Time to go.”

Tex looked around. There were more than eight people lying on the floor, ten or twelve, and a faint line of blood where someone had run for backup. She grabbed York’s arm and pulled him up. He may have sounded like hell but he was steady enough on his feet. Slower than she really liked but steady. “Out the window,” she said, holding the detonator with one hand and dragging him towards their exit with the other.

He didn’t argue, and they made it halfway before the backup returned and started shooting at them. Anyone else might have found this cause for concern, but the two of them just ducked and kept moving. “Are we jumping? I didn’t bring my jetpack.”

Tex ignored him. The glass exploded in the frame, the whole pane came down, they went through without slowing, hit the ground running. Since they were only on the third floor and in full armor, it was a lot less impressive than it sounded.

Tex stopped for a few precious seconds to get her bearings. “There,” Omega whispered. “The motorcycle. It’s a Honda.”

“And?”

“I know how to start it without a key,” Delta chimed in. York followed her to the bike, settled in as Delta talked Tex through the complex chain of lever pumping, pedal holding, and button-pressing that, almost miraculously, started the bike. The engine roared to life and there was no time to question the luck. No time to do anything but get the hell out before the people inside organized themselves enough to follow.

It wasn’t hard to lose them in traffic. Nobody came after them out the window, and by the time security scrambled out the front door, Tex and York were halfway down the block. Still, Tex took them on the highway and twenty miles past their crappy motel before ditching the bike. Why didn’t anyone come out the window after them? Why didn’t they even shoot at the bike? Tex parked in a dark parking lot, hiding the motorcycle behind a fast-food restaurant’s dumpster. In silent agreement, they walked the half-block back to the subway.

“You got shot,” York said, speaking finally once they were underground and on the other side of the turnstile. This time of night, nobody would be around in a state to comment on York’s armor, and Tex could always cloak herself.

Tex looked down at her arm. It was bleeding again, in the crease between plates. She shrugged. Just a graze, on the flesh one. It would heal itself, unlike if the other one had been hit. That would have been a nightmare of one-handed welding and searching out rare parts.

York looked at her, but he didn’t say anything until they were in the grimy subway car, under obscenely bright fluorescent lights. And it wasn’t more than a murmur of “lemme,” before he pushed biofoam along the graze.

Tex let him, their helmets nearly touching. The post-fight adrenaline crash was looming, and Omega wanted to talk to Delta while Tex just wanted to make sure York was okay and then sleep. “You got the file,” she said. “That’s something.”

“I got all the files.” York capped the pen and stowed it away. “He must be very important to them.”

“Why do you say that?” The building certainly wasn’t the kind of place Tex would have kept anything she cared about.

York sighed. “Because they’re under eight kinds of encryption.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tex and Omega waiting patiently.](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7db9tBb958ybFhWaFNRc2dRVE5aUTNaRjhCcUJiNXo3Y2xJ)


	4. I've Got A Dark Alley And A Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The long-awaited appearance of Hooker!York

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: please heed the warnings/tags. This is the bloody chapter.  
> Note the second: this story continues to have minimal sexual content -nobody is actually turning tricks.

This was the nicest hotel room Tex had ever been in. That wasn’t saying much, but it was at least clean, decorated in mauve and slate and cream. There were two beds, a dresser and a desk, two overstuffed chairs and a television, a tiny bathroom. There was a coffeepot next to the sink, so York was happy, and free wifi for Delta and Omega.

The hotel room was dim, at least. Tex was thoroughly sick of fluorescent lights.

They’d hung the do not disturb sign on the door so Omega and Delta could come out. It cheered Delta up considerably, and cheered Omega up a little. A very little. He was cranky, after three days of watching Delta pick away at the files. Omega wasn’t allowed to help -too many mistakes would make the files self-destruct, and he didn’t have the temperament for caution.

But true to her word, Tex hadn’t pulled him. She let him pace and rant and plot and control the remote. Delta rolled his eyes, despite his lack of eyeballs or face. York left to get food when Omega got to be too much, or maybe just to stave off cabin fever. He never stayed out for more than an hour at most, and today was no different.

“Turkey club,” York said, setting a bag down on the bed Tex had claimed. She set her pistol -at this point clean enough for surgery- down. “And apple pie.”

“Thanks,” Tex said, opening the pie first. At least today wasn’t a complete loss.

Omega peered over the side of the Styrofoam box, and Tex could feel his dislike. Let him disapprove. He didn’t have to eat it. If he logged off, he wouldn’t even have to taste it and she’d get a break from him. When was the last time she’d gone this long without pulling him?

“I have run into a security measure I cannot circumvent,” Delta said, his voice quietly precise. He made it sound tedious more than anything else, and had Omega not told her different she would have believed it. But an AI unencrypting a file was nothing like a human cracking it. Omega explained it as defusing a bomb while naked and colorblind. “It is a retinal scan,” Delta continued. “This layer is proving somewhat difficult, as it is one of the many equipped with a trap switch.”

“So how long would it take?” Tex’s pie tasted of fake cinnamon and was full of tiny sour apples, surrounded by filling with the consistency of personal lubricant. Also the crust managed to be both floury and soggy. But it was pie. She’d take it. It just might be the best thing to happen to her today. “In small words, please.”

York sighed. “The trap switch means if we don’t get it right the first time the file, uh, you know. Deletes. You know what a trap is.” Tex stared at him to clarify, perhaps explain how it was triggered, but he just smiled back.

“All that trouble for one man?” Omega asked. “He seems hardly worth it.”

“He’s the last one they have,” Tex reminded him. “How do we get it open?”

“A retinal scan cannot be fooled by a picture, or by DNA picked up by chance,” Delta said. “We will need someone’s eyeball in close proximity to a scanner for several minutes.” He waved, and a dossier page glowed green in the air behind him. “This man is the closest one to us with access.”

Tex wondered how long it had taken Delta to find the man. Why he hadn’t spoken up at the first sign of trouble. She appreciated the information, and she wouldn’t have done anything different…but why didn’t he say anything?

Omega interrupted her thoughts. “So we steal his eyes,” He sounded far too happy at the prospect. “As we did with the briefcase on the highway.”

York and Delta shot down the idea in unison as Tex said, “You weren’t even _there_.” Omega had been at the debriefing, and he knew full well that no body parts were brought home.

“And we had the full weight of Project Freelancer behind us,” York added. “And Wyoming still managed to fuck it up.”

Tex studied the page Delta had projected, ignoring York and Omega bickering about blame behind her. “Can our helmets scan his retina?”

“If you can get it on his head, and he keeps his eyes open.” Delta paid no more attention to the other two than Tex did.

Tex tapped the last sentence, almost cut off at the bottom. She knew exactly why Delta had let it stay. Was he letting her tell York because he didn’t want York mad at him? Or was this a gift from the sly little leprechaun? Tex bet on the first; surely Delta didn’t think Tex found their little joke at York’s expense funny. “Here. He’s a patron of male prostitutes. York, looks like you’re up.”

Omega and Delta both laughed, as if Tex wasn’t serious. “You have got to be kidding me,” York said to the ceiling.

“Do you have a better idea?” He didn’t, she knew. It was a _brilliant_ idea, she realized. Who else would get so close to their target so easily, without the need of an extensive cover story? “Then let’s go shopping.”

“That will not be necessary, York has sufficient clothing in his duffle. Clearly you do not have much experience with men selling their bodies,” Delta sniffed, apparently their resident expert on the subject. For the logical one of the family, he was hilariously expressive and Tex treasured that. Delta wasn’t quite her brother, not like he was Omega’s, but perhaps she could consider him a friend. At the very least, he was on her team of his own right, not just tagging along with York.

“And you do?” Omega asked. The brothers had managed to find an equilibrium, with Omega turning down the hostility down a few notches and Delta taking it less personally. Perhaps they’d never be friends, but they could at least work together, and that was far more important.

In answer to Omega’s question, Delta indicated York with a sweep of his arms more eloquent than mere words ever could be. York’s eye remained firmly skyward.

“I concede to your greater expertise,” Tex said, to see if York would blush. As a cover, not a necessity, Tex could see the humor. He could handle one civilian, he could handle this. And he didn’t say no. That was important. He didn’t say no to this plan, and Tex knew he wouldn’t hesitate if he was going to. York may bitch and moan and show up fifteen minutes late with coffee, but he had Tex’s back and if he wouldn’t do anything he told her. She didn’t know if there was anyone left she trusted even half as much as York.

Unaware of her thoughts, York dragged his gaze down to look Tex in the eye. “You know I am not actually a hooker, right?” And he wasn’t, she knew. York was a terrible liar and he’d never be able to deny it so convincingly if he was. No, he wasn’t upset about this. Not thrilled, but willing. “I don’t promise to be convincing.”

Tex shrugged. “You are now.” She smiled. After everything they’d done, this would be downright easy.

*~*

The bar was called Santa Monica. Tex thought that might be the name of a place back on Earth. York was too nervous to care. “Sync?” he said softly, shivering in the cold air. He was dressed in civvies, rather nicely Tex thought. And far from what she expected a rentboy to wear. He had no coat, and the thin shirt clung to the curve of his muscles, but his pants went all the way to his ankles and there was no mesh in sight. His helmet was secured in the shadows of the alley they stood in, waiting for their target. The plan was simple. Lure him outside, pop the helmet on his head. Delta inside it would get the scan he needed.

“Sync,” Tex said, leaning against the wall. She was fully armored and ready to cloak, Omega a dark knot at the back of her skull. They watched York go around the corner and out of their sight before they disappeared. It didn’t feel right letting York walk off all but naked, but Tex consoled herself with the thought that nobody else was armored, and all York had to do was get to her to be safe.

They waited.

Omega had a hard time waiting at the best of times, and tonight Tex kept a tight leash on him, unwilling to let him jump farther than the security cameras where he could watch York. She wanted him to stay here here, help her guard Delta immobile in York’s helmet. “What’s wrong?” she asked him after the fourth jump. “What has you so goddamn twitchy?”

“Delta.” Omega wanted to elaborate, Tex could tell, but he was afraid. Afraid of her, of losing her respect, and that was another package for Carolina’s overfull locker. Now, she waited for him to continue. “He’s terrified of York getting hurt.”

Tex understood, very well. “Enough to throw them off?”

“No,” Omega said, dark and slick as spilled motor oil. “But Delta is afraid.”

“If it doesn’t affect the mission, why does it affect you?” Tex had been depending on Omega to keep his head in the situation -not exactly ideal, but who else was there? She didn’t need this to get any worse. “You don’t even like Delta.”

“Who said that,” Omega demanded, his anger flaring up like oil burning under water. “Who denied that?”

“Your own actions,” Tex replied sharply, but she didn’t have time to elaborate on how two heartfelt conversations and a handful of days without a fight did not a declaration of undying love make. The door was creaking open, and she needed to be in position.

York came out, just as planned. So quickly, but followed by a stranger that Tex needed a minute to identify in the sickly yellow glow of the sodium lights. Tex moved, silent as the wind, put the man in a headlock before he could so much as gasp. York had his helmet at the ready and slammed it on the man’s head none too gently.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” he said to the man. “Just keep your eyes open.”

The man struggled against Tex’s invisible arms. “We can hurt you,” she pointed out to him. “You don’t really have a choice, now, do you?”

The man spit something profane, in a language Tex didn’t recognize. Delta appeared on York’s left to say, “He refuses to open his eyes.”

“Thank you, Delta, we had no idea.” Omega’s voice dripped with more venom than anything digital should be capable of.

“Now what?” York crossed his arms over his chest. He was unarmed. Without any way to hide a weapon, he’d been forced to go in naked. “We say pretty please?”

“Pinch him?” she suggested. How long would Delta’s scan take?

“Half a minute,” Omega supplied where only Tex could hear. “Thirty seconds without him so much as twitching.”

Tex didn’t know what, exactly, their prisoner said, but it must have translated to “fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” Delta helpfully offered, “He says that he doesn’t care what door you want unlocked, he will never betray the trust of his boss.” The man continued, his voice taking a desperately sarcastic edge. “He thanks you for not asking nicely and putting conflict into his heart.”

“So brave,” York said, shifting his feet. “You think his boss would do the same?”

Tex stared at the back of York’s helmet, willing the man to do something she never would. York stared at her, with an expression she could not decipher. Why was it easier for her to read his expression in a helmet?

The door opened.

Instinctively, York grabbed for Tex’s pistol and pointed it at the movement. Tex turned as well, dragging her captive. The weedy busboy dropped the garbage bag and shrieked.

“Go,” Tex ordered, wishing for a third hand for her knife.

York waved the boy back towards the door with the gun. “He owes my friend money,” he said with his best charming grin. “Nothing anyone else needs to get involved in.”

Wild-eyed, the boy backed through the door. Omega jumped into the security camera before the door slammed shut. Their target said something Delta didn’t bother to translate.

“Yeah, so he’s calling the cops,” York said. Omega popped back to confirm that, with a wordless snarl.

“The local law enforcement has an average response time of eleven minutes,” Delta reported.

Tex hesitated for half a precious second. They needed to find Wash, before this night’s adventure, before their earlier break-in led to whoever created the file moving him. They needed to open that file yesterday and be on a shuttle tomorrow. They needed Wash and nothing else mattered. She knew exactly what needed to happen. Omega had called it, damn him.

Omega felt her intentions and flared to brilliant existence, lighting up the man’s head as she tightened her grip on his unarmored neck. It wasn’t exact, choking a man into unconsciousness. It didn’t need to be. She held it for a few extra seconds, not wanting him to wake up halfway through.

Tex uncloaked, for York’s comfort more than anything. “Take the helmet off,” she told him, laying the man on the ground.

“What are you doing, Tex?” he asked, not coming closer.

Tex drew her knife. “What does it _look_ like I’m doing?”

“I hope it’s not what it looks like!” York took two steps back, his fingers tapping against the seam of his pants.

“Do you have a better idea?” Tex unsealed the helmet herself. “Before they figure out what file you stole and move Wash?”

He made another complicated facial expression but came closer again. “Biofoam,” he said, and she knew he’d done the same calculations she had, arrived at the same answer. “And I’m calling an ambulance.”

“Don’t bother, the cops will bring one.” She traded him the biofoam for her pistol, knelt over the man stretched out on the ground, and set to work. It was harder than she thought it would be. Her ka-bar was sharp, but there was a hidden roughness that sent it skittering. She had to take it slow and deliberate, afraid of damaging her prize, of cutting something she didn’t want to. Afraid, too, of someone coming around the corner or through the door and finding them. She pushed the fear away, not letting her hands falter. Wash was too important. It was easy for her to remember the yellow bright stripes of his armor, the way his voice rose to impossible pitches, the way he always spoke to her like she was a real person. She owed him no debt; they were on the same team so they didn’t keep score. Washington was worth this.

Tex sat back on her heels, her trophy cradled gingerly in one hand. York moved into the space she’d just occupied, his face very white but his mouth set in a grim line. His hands were shaking like Tex’s weren’t but biofoam required far less precision for a knife, and it was far quicker, and he was done before she found a suitable container in the trash to transport the necessary back to the hotel room.

York held his hands out for the container. Tex handed it to him without a word. Their AIs had logged off at some point, Tex missed exactly when. York put his helmet on, and without a word they returned to the rented motorcycle, parked half a block away. A silent York was not a good thing, she thought.

York was very small against her back, and she couldn’t feel his warmth through her armor. His arms didn’t feel strong enough around her waist. Why hadn’t she insisted on finding him some proper leathers? What if some asshole came barreling through a red light and hit them? York would be flung like a ragdoll, smeared across the pavement in pieces linked by lines of red. She should have made him sit in front of her. Oh, he wouldn’t fare any better in a crash, but at least she’d be able to see his broken body.

Omega was silent the whole way home. Tex could hardly feel him. Once they arrived back at the motel safely, once there was no more danger from oversized SUVs driven by men with undersized dicks, Tex took a second to look for him. He wasn’t sulking, just sitting in the observation room with a cup of cold coffee. She let him be, not having time to look a gift horse in the mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My mother read this. My _mother_.


	5. The Pros and Cons of Breathing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's hard, sometimes, to get Omega to shut up and listen.

When Tex came out of the bathroom, her body at least freshly scrubbed, York had set up a truly impressive tangle of wires on his bed, his helmet nestled next to what looked like…four boxes with blinking green LEDs. One of them looked like a homemade clock bomb, two looked like he’d picked them up at a shady phone repair shop, and the last one she _knew_ he stole from the Project. She had no idea what York was using them for. Or what Delta was doing, beyond dancing green like so many fireflies in the weeds. Omega, she guessed, was providing moral support.

“Do you think Wash knows we’re coming?” His own covered in machinery, York was lying on top of Tex’s bed with his eyes closed.

“He hates us, I think,” Tex said, perching near York’s head, close enough to reach out and touch him. “For what we did to the ship. We broke so many rules.”

“That’s not fair, he doesn’t have all the information. We’ll explain and he’ll understand.” But York turned his face away from her. “Besides, what does that have to do with us coming for him?”

“We abandoned him.” Tex’s words fell from her mouth like shell casings. “We didn’t even look for him.” Tex hadn’t looked for anyone, Tex had seen Carolina go over the cliff and ran. The memory weighed on her, heavier and colder than snow. Sidewinder had been the first time she’d seen snow. It reminded her of ash, cold and dead. Was leaving Wash there, alone, forgivable?

Probably not. But if Wash was still alive to hate them, that would be enough.

*~*

Tex woke near dawn, an unfamiliar sound coming from the bathroom. Omega was asleep, cold and dark and dead to the world. York was no longer next to her, though Delta’s lights were off.

There was light spilling from the crack of the bathroom door. Tex heard the toilet flush, and thought at first to let York have his privacy. But the noise started up again, followed by a low groan that had her on her feet to check on him.

“York? You okay?” She opened the door to find him kneeling in front of the toilet, gripping the seat with white knuckles.

Oh. So that’s what that sound was. Tex joined him on the floor, her hand on his heaving back, unsure what to do. She didn’t ask him what was wrong, just yet, not when his mouth was occupied.

When he finally sat up, breathing hard, Tex handed him some tissue to wipe the sourness from his mouth. He did, dropped it in the toilet without looking, flushed it away. “Tonight was kinda fucked up,” he said, by way of explanation.

“Yeah, well, it’s not the end of the world, for him. Might be for Wash,” Tex said. “You do just fine, I mean.”

York leaned against her, sticky with sweat. Tex didn’t know what to do, so she did nothing. Better than doing the wrong thing. York picked her hands up, arranged her arms around him, turned his face into her shoulder. Using her borrowed bones to protect his good eye. “I have Delta,” he mumbled.

Tex tried to think what Carolina would do. Carolina could make this better, if she was here. Carolina knew how to take care of a team and Tex couldn’t even keep them in one piece. The tile was cold under her ass, against her back. How much worse for York, warm in her arms and damp with sweat, like he’d just run a marathon?

He was still babbling, though she wasn’t paying any attention and he didn’t seem to mind. Or even notice. His hands were wound in her shirt, clutching her with trembling hands. Why hadn’t that man just opened his eyes? It would have been so easy. “I used to be a good Catholic boy, you know,” York claimed, and paused like he wanted a real answer.

“Never touched yourself, let the detachable showerhead do it for you?” Tex asked.

York looked up at her and froze, then laughed, a slightly hysterical howl he quickly muffled in Tex’s neck. Tex combed her fingers through his hair, stiff with gel and sweat and hopefully nothing worse. This was rock bottom, she was absolutely sure. This was as bad as it could get and they’d survived. They could find Wash, convince him of the truth, go meet up with North and take Connie’s files to someone who might make it stop, once everyone they cared about was out of the danger zone.

They would never tell Wash what they did for him. He didn’t need to carry that weight.

*~*

“I have access to his file,” Delta said shortly before dawn, before the cops tracked them down.

Omega made a noise Tex didn’t know he was capable of, flicking on next to Delta. “That was easy. Too easy.” What was Omega expecting, the computer to explode?

“It was the last layer. He is on the _Angel On My Shoulder_.” How Delta managed to pack so much into so few words was simply amazing. 

“I _told_ you it was too easy,” Omega insisted, even though he hadn’t. Even though they’d held a man down and cut the eyeball from his skull. “Why wasn’t it guarded properly? Because you could broadcast the coordinates across half the galaxy and nobody would be able to get him, that’s why!”

“Shut up, cabron,” Tex ordered. This was a good thing. Wash wasn’t dead in the crash like she feared. This was something they could work with. She looked down at York, but York couldn’t see her sitting on his blind side, and he was staring unfocusedly at Delta anyways.

“It would be significantly easier to retrieve him from a terrestrial facility,” Delta admitted. “Thirty-four point nine percent easier, to be exact.”

“It would be significantly easier to retrieve him from my incorporeal ass!” Omega shouted.

York shrugged. “We’ve broken into ships before. And the _Angel_ , we’ve been on. It’s open to the public, that should make it easier.”

Delta brightened at that, literally. “It is designed to move people around quickly,” he said. “They very well may sacrifice security for speed.”

“This is stupid, this is impossible,” Omega screamed. “This is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever been in the same room as, and I once saw the Director’s budget proposal!”

Everyone ignored him. “Tex, I think it’s your turn in the barrel,” York said. “Do you want me to shoot you in the left or right foot?”

Tex slapped Omega away from gross motor control. She didn’t want him to rip the arms off the chair. “We all marched over to visit Maine,” she said. “Why don’t we just do that again?”

“We could do that,” York said, then hesitated. “It could be a trap, you know. We open the door and there’s the Director with a couple of containment units and a platoon of MPs.”

“You are not doing this!” It was hard to think with Omega’s anger racing through her blood, racing through the blood of the body they shared. Tex held one finger up, silently asking York and Delta to give her a minute.

She found Omega in the infirmary, armored in chartreuse and mauve once more, barricaded behind useless expensive-looking machinery and armed with a scalpel. “You _said_ ,” he hissed at her. “No more pulling.”

The containment unit was in her duffel, five feet and a broken promise away. It would be so easy to throw Omega in there and lock him down. Tex had the same passwords, the same commands, the same power over Omega the Director had. She could send him in and out of blackness with three words and a dirty look.

But she had promised. “No pulling,” she agreed. “Come out of there.” Omega stood up slowly, but he didn’t come out and he was still holding the scalpel. Why that, and not a gun, not even a proper combat knife? Tex didn’t think about it too hard. For all he could seem reasonable, Omega didn’t possess enough logic to cover the head of a pin. Tex had long since given up on understanding her partner. “Put down the knife.”

“Why.” Omega lowered it, but he held on, and she knew under his gauntlet his knuckles were white.

“Because I don’t like to talk to people waving sharp objects around!” Tex snapped. “Put it down and come talk to me like a rational person!”

“I’m not a person,” Omega sulked, and he kept ahold of his weapon, but he finally came out of his little fort. “And you’re not rational.”

Tex did not have time for this. Of all the things she did not have time for, Omega fucking around was at the top of the list. Omega was capable of a great deal of fucking around, and the longer it took to find Wash, the greater the odds they moved him. She gave him one last change, more to assuage her conscience than anything. “Omega, are you going to be any help with this, or are you going to be quiet and let the adults talk?”

“Help you with what, suicide by hospital rent-a-cop?”

Well, nobody could say she hadn’t tried. Tex rocked on her heels twice, making sure of her balance before she struck.

Omega saw it coming, but that didn’t help him. He was terrible at close-quarters, simply terrible. The blade didn’t even scratch the black finish of Tex’s armor. She trapped his hand and ripped it from his fingers anyways, figuring that would disarm him far more psychologically than physically.

“Why,” Omega howled as she forced him to his knees. “Why do you love this man so much? It’s not like he gave you, your daughter, a kidney, half a liver, even a drop of blood!” He twisted from her grip and scuttled back, out of reach.

Tex picked up the scalpel, but let Omega go, a wave of pity threatening to drown her. She didn’t need a daughter for Wash to save to save him in turn, didn’t Omega understand that? All this time and he still couldn’t grasp it? Tex couldn’t even be frustrated; she was starting to suspect that Omega was simply incapable of understanding.

“Leave no man behind,” she said quietly. “He would come for me.”

Tex knew that, the same way she knew that Delta’s gun was more teddy bear than defense, the way she knew York didn’t put sugar in his coffee and where North’s eyebrows went. A million tiny observations, not one flashy incident to point out to Omega, just an ocean of trust.

“He would not,” Omega insisted, but he was wrong, so wrong. “You owe him nothing. You don’t owe him your suicide.” Omega’s voice never got higher and cracked like Church’s, instead it dropped lower and held steady. “You don’t owe him Delta’s life, fuck, Tex, I won’t let you do this!”

“Try and stop me.” Tex walked over to the standing supply cabinet. It was big enough for her purpose, and she emptied it with little more than the thought.

“I will!” Omega stood and came close enough to grab Tex’s arm. Tex let him, let him think this was still a discussion. His fingers were tight on her, but they were not rough, and she wished again that he wasn’t such a pigheaded grade-a asshole. He could be good, she thought, as good as anyone could be after what the Project did to them all. If he wanted. If he tried. “I won’t allow you to do this!”

Tex didn’t argue with him. Where was the point? He didn’t control her, not in the slightest. She turned to him, took his hands in hers, and ignored the hope dawning in his most secret places.

Then she spun them back around and shoved Omega in the locker.

Omega screamed, and swore furiously, but she slammed the door shut in his face before he sorted himself out. He was so terrible with surprises, so easy to knock off balance. He loved plans and backup plans, he was so helpless when he was surprised. Tex almost felt bad for taking advantage of it.

Not too bad, though. She’d let him out later. In a real metal cabinet, with real armor, a person could break out easily. Not here, though, when more than the metal held the door shut. With Tex’s will behind it, the door held fast while Omega pounded and raved. She didn’t tell him that she was only going to leave him there until she was done talking to York. There was no point, when he clearly wasn’t listening.

She looked up at York and Delta, let the cold calm of space settle around her. There would be time to indulge Omega later. “Now. I do not abandon my team. Where does the _Angel_ supply from? That would be the easiest place to catch a shuttle.”

“Where is Omega?” Delta asked, pressed close to York’s side like that made a difference. York had naked horror on his face. “You promised not to pull him.”

“I didn’t. I promised not to, so I didn’t pull him.” Tex crossed her arms. It wasn’t Delta’s business where Omega was, beyond not making a scene. Wasn’t that enough?

“You said…” York started, but he shook his head. “You said Wash would come for you,” he said instead of whatever he thought about whatever had come out of Tex’s mouth. Wise man. “You’re right. He would come for any of us.”

“Any agent.” Tex didn’t miss how Delta stressed the word. “Where is Omega?”

“Oh, he’s just in time-out, for fuck’s sake.” Tex was not their mother, dammit, she had too much on her plate to babysit their emotions. “I’ll let him out later. Right now we need a rational discussion, and he can sit there until he’s ready to behave.”

York swallowed, but that wasn’t the worst thing he’d seen Tex do. She wondered, a little too late, if he was bothered by what they’d done to get that retinal scan. “Fine. D, pull up the map. Let’s get a plan together.”

*~*

Tex would be lying if she said she wasn’t tempted to leave Omega locked up. But to do so would be wrong.

It would be abandonment.

So once the plan was as done as they were getting and the other two started on the fake IDs they would need, she returned to the ersatz _Mother_ , to the medbay where Omega screamed. Two hours later and he was still shrieking like a mountain cat, still hurling curses at her and Washington and for some reason only known to him Wyoming.

He stopped as soon as the door lock clicked, before she even pulled it open. Omega didn’t move when she stepped back to give him room, staring at her in eerie silence.

Tex rocked back on her heels and considered him for a moment. Omega only understood pain and avoiding pain, and she wasn’t sure how effective timeout was on him. But it hadn’t hurt him. In the closet, he would still be able to feel Tex, her thoughts, what she experienced, if he stopped to listen.

No, it hadn’t hurt him at all, and maybe that meant he learned nothing. But Tex and York had gotten to speak, and that was good enough. Tex didn’t want to hurt him. Tex had never wanted to hurt him. 

Tex broke the silence first, out of pity more than any impatience on her part. “I would come for you,” she said. “Everything I’m doing for Wash and more, I would do if you were taken from me.”

Maybe Omega didn’t know that. He kept asking what was so special about Wash to deserve all this, when really there wasn’t anything. Oh, there was plenty about Wash that was rare and fantastic, but that was not why she couldn’t leave him. Omega just didn’t seem to get teamwork. Considering where he came from, it shouldn’t have taken her this long to realize that.

“Omega,” she said. “Do you understand? This isn’t about Wash, this isn’t about you or me. This is something bigger than us.” Tex wasn’t the greatest soldier, too many questions and not enough trust. But Allison had been a Marine, this body had once sworn to the Corps. Tex wasn’t sure if she counted as a person, even. Was there paperwork somewhere that gave her a real name, a next of kin and a place she belonged to? Or was she merely property, without the protection of the law? Whatever she was, whatever Omega was, one way or another they belonged to the UNSC. It was...the other Freelancers had family and faith and friends. All Tex had was a gossamer link to someone else’s principles, a spider’s thread linking her to complete strangers. But spiderwebs could stop bullets, if someone was willing to arrange them just right.

“Never abandon your team,” Tex said. “And your team won’t abandon you.”

Omega didn’t answer her, just faded out. He reappeared in the world, half an inch behind Delta. Delta said something that Tex didn’t catch, though she understood the worried tone well enough. Omega’s reply came with slightly mad cackling, but honestly, he always sounded a little deranged.

That would have to be good enough. Tex had a few more things for Carolina’s locker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic started with three images: Delta continually suggesting York sell his body in an attempt to be funny, Tex on a quest for the perfect apple pie, and Omega shoved into a locker.
> 
> [Tex and Omega fighting](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7db9tBb958ybnZZTS0xeHVhdjdQeHJZYzJVb2tfQ2V5Nncw)


	6. Sending Postcards From A Plane Crash (Wish You Were Here)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> York hacks into a computer via birthday cake.

Tex was starting to think that maybe she didn’t like apple pie after all. Why else was it so hard to find some that didn’t taste like chemical-soaked saltines? Maybe she was just wrong about what it was supposed to taste like.

Or maybe she had pissed off some powerful entity that warped the fabric of space and time to keep only substandard apple pie within her reach. The same entity that made her too late for Carolina, blinded her to Maine, Alpha…

Yeah. Pie was too much to ask for. At least York was okay, sitting across from her in the tiny shuttle cabin, spinning something in his fingers. He’d come up with fake ID for them, gave the _Angel_ a mostly-true story about wanting to visit a comrade. The person on the other side of the vid screen hadn’t asked anything, just told York where the nearest port was to catch a shuttle. She’d sounded like she did that fifty times a day. Perhaps she did.

Omega was almost bearable today, leaning against Delta and a lighter purple than he usually displayed. It took Tex a moment to realize why it looked so familiar. “No green stripe?” she asked.

“Don’t want to be mistaken for North Dakota,” Omega said, not looking up from whatever dream Delta was holding in his hands.

“North isn’t the worst person to be mistaken for.” Tex didn’t elaborate, not chancing Delta’s panic. Delta hadn’t so much as looked at her since they came back from the bar.

“He’s an overprotective control freak.” After a second where nobody reacted, Omega added, “He’s perfect for Theta.”

“And what are you implying about Theta?” Delta huffed.

Omega shrugged. “North likes to fix people.”

That was the wrong thing to say, and Tex could have told him that. Delta was hilariously overprotective of Theta, not that anyone could blame him. Not when the Counselor had all but called him an asshole. Tex hadn’t been there for that, but she had seen Delta and Theta together, afterwards, Delta doing his damnedest to prove Price wrong.

“Are you saying there’s something _wrong_ with Theta?”

The trapped feeling descended on Tex second-hand, as Omega realized he couldn’t answer that question, not without making a hash of it and having Delta at his throat. Omega hadn’t been there when Theta came; that had been all Sigma. Omega didn’t know Theta like he knew Sigma, Gamma, Delta, and Tex felt his explanation burning in her throat. Theta was the only one of the family who came without Omega’s help.

The only one who survived without Omega’s help.

Sigma did not know where to make the cut, and the pieces he pulled had been diffuse and unsupportable, collapsing in under their own weight. Theta shouldn’t have fared any better; only Omega knew where Alpha’s bones were, only Omega knew to dislocate the joints, knew what landmarks to look for. Only Omega knew which bits to include and how to staunch the bleeding, and he held this knowledge tucked under his armor, under his ribs.

Tex had wondered, at the time, what exactly it was he refused to hand over to his brothers, what he forced the Director and the Counselor to include him on. Now, she knew he was trying to keep the other fragments from torturing Church. If only he knew, so Omega reasoned, his brothers wouldn’t be part of it. And Theta was the only one Omega hadn’t been up to his elbows in, but after that it was always two or three of them, never again Omega alone. A failure Omega didn’t like thinking of, and Tex liked thinking about even less. 

In the simulated cafeteria, where he never came, Omega had a cup of coffee and his helmet on the table. Tex still had her terrible pie. “Theta is big,” he said, as if that made any sense.

“Theta always looks small to me.” On the table behind Omega’s bare head, a ghostwoman laid.

Omega shook his head. “Theta is big, and Sigma got lucky. He didn’t know what he was doing, he just ripped.”

Tex tilted her head but let him continue. Sometimes on the ship, in the space between Connie leaving and their own departure, Tex would remember what Omega had done, or he’d start talking about it, and then Tex would pull him, fling him as far away from her as she could manage. He always came back, and somewhere along the line it had become normal. Carolina was the best regardless of what the leaderboard said and Gamma’s jokes were terrible and Omega cut Alpha apart with surgical precision and York was surprisingly small outside his armor.

“I saw the scar,” Omega looked down at his coffee. “It was … big,” he offered, rather lamely. “Sigma didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing so he kept doing it all wrong.”

“And what was he supposed to be doing?” Tex asked, half to encourage Omega in a direction other than incoherent rage. She would take coherent rage. She _would_ meet him halfway, like any other teammate.

“Making another you. Another person who could _be_ ,” Omega snarled. “Not like us with all our missing pieces.”

That didn’t make any sense. Tex waited for him to explain. Being quiet, giving him space to talk seemed to help. He wasn’t less angry, she would be surprised if the mug survived the conversation, she could feel the tightening in her shoulders. But he was focused, controlled, instead of lashing out and screaming things nobody understood.

“It was all in CT’s files,” he said. “You’re different than us, all the way down. Didn’t you read them?”

Connie’s dog tags were cold against her skin, wherever Tex went. They sat under her armor and suit and shirt, where they couldn’t be lost or forgotten. Tex hadn’t looked at the files since she copied sets for York and North. “I do not have your morbid love of dissection, no. I skipped that part.”

“That was self-defense,” Omega’s voice was deep, deep as his rage, and she wondered if he did that on purpose. How much of his appearance was under his control? More than Tex’s own, probably. “I need to know how things are put together so I know how to take them apart.”

Tex refused to be afraid of him. “You like taking people apart,” she reminded him. “That’s a little off-putting to some people.”

“I don’t have a _choice_ , you stupid…” Omega cut himself off. “I held up my end of the bargain and you can say a lot about the Director but he keeps his word.”

Tex was a little curious, but mostly she was thoroughly sick of the Director coming up every time she turned around. One day, she fantasized, she would go twenty-four hours without being reminded of his existence. “You like it,” she repeated.

Omega shrugged and leaned back. “It’s important to enjoy what you do.”

It was forced casualness, and she could hear his thoughts as loud as if he shouted them. He wasn’t even trying to keep them private, and she assumed he wanted her to know that he failed because nobody was as strong as Tex. That if he had been better at it, Sigma and Gamma would never have been involved. Gamma wouldn’t have returned to Wyoming glitching and sparking. Sigma wouldn’t have broken. Omega was supposed to do the dirty work and keep them safe. Protector and avenger, the Counselor’s files said he was, made to do all the things Church wanted to be capable of.

Apparently common sense hadn’t been on the wish list. Tex forced her eyes not to roll. “You seem to be pretty strong,” she pointed out. “That Engineer never touched you, after all.”

“I am too broken to fix,” Omega said, and there was enough self-loathing in his voice to soften Tex. He didn’t make her life difficult because he thought it was fun, after all. Other people’s, yes, but not hers. He was doing his best. When he didn’t have anything else to be mad at, he got mad at himself, and oh, it would be so much simpler if he would let himself be angry at her.

Tex had been called a lot of things, most of them true. But Omega was on her team, and so she couldn’t just leave him to stew. “You can’t fix what’s not broken.”

Tex didn’t know how long they had been lost inside her head. Long enough for her pie to grow cold and for York to put away his toy. “I have just one question for you,” he said.

“Go ahead.” Tex hoped it would be easy, but when was it ever?

“Where the _fuck_ does all this apple pie come from?”

*~*

Getting on the ship was easy. The IDs held up to the casual examination at the entrance, and nobody even asked for the name of the squad mate they were visiting. All they were asked to do was set their radios to short-wave only. 

Getting Wash off would be harder. York thought they could talk their way out of it. Tex figured she could always throw the camo unit on Wash and sneak him out that way. Even if Wash couldn’t quite walk out on his own feet, they could carry him.

Then they would get on the shuttle, go find another no-tell motel with the last of their cash and...maybe Wash would want apple pie. Yeah, they’d get some apple pie and live happily ever after. Sure.

There were public-access computers with directories, but of course Wash wasn’t listed. “I know where to find him,” York said, nodding towards a door of average width, considerably narrower than most of the other ones. “If anyone comes, you’re deaf and I don’t speak English.”

“What if they speak Arabic?” Tex asked, pretending to study the poster on the wall until the hallway cleared.

York sighed, a full-body experience complete with headshake. “You cloak. I’m lost.” He pushed the door open, and Tex followed him.

Behind the door was an office, dark but far from abandoned. There were cubicles and potted plants, and it looked so much like the one back on Ula’ula Tex expected to end up in another closet.

York stopped at one of the cubicles, looked around the desk. “This one will do,” he said, sitting in the chair. He spun three hundred and sixty degrees before he stopped and bumped the mouse to wake up the computer. “The login will be her first initial last name, so k-s-a-t-o-u,” he said, pecking at the civilian keyboard with his heavy gloves still on. “And her password...z-o-e-o-n-e-n-i-n-e-six.” He hit enter with a flourish.

“How did you possibly know that,” Tex asked, when it somehow, miraculously, worked.

York reached out and tapped a picture frame next to the monitor. “Happy Birthday Zoe,” read the cake, and yes, a timestamp of June 19th was just visible in the corner. There was a little girl blowing out the candles. Tex didn’t look too closely at it in the gloom. “Parents always use their kid’s names,” he said. “If they’re too short, they add their birthday. D, help me find the file.”

Delta appeared, and Tex didn’t need to be told to keep watch. Omega came out too, but stayed close to Tex, too close for her to see.

“It says he’s on Grey Deck,” York said after a minute. “He’s under a number, but it’s the one from his file. Room 57.”

“Does it say anything about his condition?”

York shut down the computer. “This person only has access to legal information, not medical. He doesn’t have a DNR so...that’s helpful.”

“As helpful as you in a coma,” Omega muttered.

“But we know where he’s supposed to be.” York stood, but made no move to head out. They were very close. Tex waved him onward. “Let’s mosey,” she said, with a cheer she didn’t really feel.

Tex and Omega had a vague recollection of Code Grey meaning a combative patient. Perhaps they simply threw him in the psych ward, said he was delusional and violent, so nobody would listen to him while they did damage control. That was the best-case scenario. 

On reflection, not very comforting.

York turned away from the map. “Grey deck is this way,” he said. “Three up.”

Tex followed him without a word to the elevators. This was their only chance. If they failed, and lived, would they ever find Wash again? “York,” she murmured.

“Hold up. Doctors,” he whispered back.

Tex hated doctors. Allison didn’t have strong feelings either way, but Tex loathed them. Omega wished he was one, wished for his own meat suit so he could be a surgeon, wished so badly Delta heard it.

“You just want an excuse to cut people open and look inside,” Delta accused over text.

“I do,” Omega agreed cheerfully enough. Tex and York exchanged a speaking look. The rest of the elevator, thankfully, didn’t even notice.

Tex could not smell the hospital behind her helmet filters, a small mercy. There didn’t seem to be any security as they walked off the elevators and down the hall. Where were the cameras, the guards? Were they going the right way?

York began to tell a long and involved joke Tex ignored. She wondered if he was as nervous as she was.

There was a nurse’s station, but the person behind the desk only asked if they knew the room number. What was going on? In the back of her head, Omega tensed, winding down tighter into Tex’s reflexes.

The walls were bare, Tex noticed. There were no hopeful posters or painted murals or any of the other helpful signs hung in the rest of the hospital. The walls were all glass, with curtains drawn. The rooms were large; the doors far apart.

Wash was at the end, far from the nurse’s station. That seemed a good sign. Tex dared to hope he would be happy to see them.

York didn’t hesitate in front of the door, trying the knob. It wasn’t locked. Tex would remember that later. His file was under more security than she knew existed and his door wasn’t locked.

Behind the door, there were machines and a man Tex didn’t recognize in a bed. So many machines, Omega and Delta materializing on top of one of them. Risky, since they weren’t sure this was the right room.

“Sonovabitch,” York breathed next to her, and it sounded like a prayer.

Omega laughed and laughed and laughed and Tex finally understood. This was Agent Washington. She’d never seen him without his helmet.

York took a few steps forwards, not close enough to touch the man in the bed. Not close enough to touch Wash. Wash was almost hidden among all the tubes and wires, in his nose and under the blanket pulled to his waist and a large one taped to his chest, as big around as his wrist.

“He has no pulse,” Delta whispered. Tex was no longer surprised at the depths of emotion the green AI could reach. Tex would never be surprised again.

York shook his head. “It’s the machines. I’ve heard of them.” He reached out, his hand hovered over that largest tube, but he did not dare touch it. “One of them takes his blood through here and…” He trailed off and tipped his head towards Delta. “They’re keeping him alive, is the important part.”

Tex stared at Wash’s face. She’d never seen it before and now she needed to memorize it. His freckles, dusted across his nose, did not surprise her. There was a scar on his chin, old, two decades at least. Tex didn’t know what could have possibly caused it. The rest of the room faded out as she tried to guess, as she tried to drag her gaze away.

Wash was younger than she’d thought, and she’d thought him the youngest. “Save you,” Omega laughed, and Tex ignored him. Wash had tiny lines between his eyebrows, the kind that came from a lifetime of frowning. He wasn’t frowning now. Tex hoped that meant he wasn’t in pain. Jesus, he was so small without his armor.

“We have to leave him, D,” York said, and Tex could punch him. Tex could just punch him but if she started she may never stop. “We can’t unhook him. He’ll die.”

They had to leave. There was nothing more for them here, not until Wash was unhooked from, call it what it was, life support. Tex did not indulge in anything like touching him, or speaking to him. He wouldn’t hear it or feel it, he wouldn’t know she was there. He didn’t care for promises that she’d come back, promises she might not be able to keep.

Tex turned on her heel and walked out the door, Omega’s laughter still ringing in her ears. 

She did not say goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [playlist on playmoss](https://playmoss.com/en/akisawana/playlist/grand-theft-washington)
> 
> And that's all, folks.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
